SHAKESPEARE’S COUNSELOR

Welcome once more to Shakespeare, the second most famous fictional town in Arkansas—home to Lily Bard, housecleaner to some of the best families in Shakespeare. Newly and secretly married to p.i. Jack Leeds (Shakespeare’s Trollop, 2000, etc.), Lily is still trying to exorcise the memory of a brutal gang rape she suffered years before in Memphis. She’s joined a small therapy group headed by Tamsin Lynd, wife of computer specialist Cliff Eggers, and for years the prey of a stalker who seems to have followed her from Cleveland to leave such trophies as the dead squirrel hung over her front door and the naked body of Saralynn Kleinhoff left on the floor of her office at the therapy center. That death is followed by the fatal stabbing of local police patrolman Gerry McClanahan, the Eggers neighbor who turns out to have been well-known pseudonymous crime writer Gibson Banks. A call from Tamsin asking Lily for her domestic services brings the cleaner to the Eggers house in time to witness the last act of this utterly improbable scenario.

The least convincing of the Shakespeare series, saved from total disaster only by Lily’s still-intriguing persona.